At 09:16 AM 7/2/00 -0800, Doug Ewell wrote:
>The problem with the phrase "plain text ceases to be plain if you decide
>that layout information needs to be encoded" is the word "layout." In
>the broadest sense, line and paragraph separation could be considered
>"layout," and nobody would suggest doing away with the plain-text
>characters needed to control those functions.

In the case of furigana, the need was to have a set of codes that control
these functions for *internal* use in algorithms, rather than *external*
use in interchange. Another example of this clas of *internal* code is the
OBJECT REPLACEMENT CHARACTER.